Priceless Science: Striking Finds From a Rare-Book Fair

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Priceless Science: Striking Finds From a Rare-Book Fair

There are places where open flames are particularly frowned upon. A textile mill or a stationery store, for instance. And then there are places where the mere mention of a flame, fire, spark, smoke or ember elicits pandemonium. The San Francisco Antiquarian Book, Print and Paper Fair, held earlier this month, would be such a place. In a building stretching one square block sat some of the rarest texts, maps and manuscripts in the world, precariously flammable, and indubitably expensive.
Particularly fetching among these cultural treasures were the scientific tomes — works of biology, astronomy, chemistry and the like — which dealers proudly displayed with the most enticing illustration forward. It’s the intellectual equivalent of the models on the car lot with their hoods popped open, only with more flammability and much more intellect. From Audubon’s The Birds of America, a first edition of which sold last month at auction for $7.9 million, to Copernicus’ heliocentric sketch that changed the world, we’ve selected the most remarkable works the fair had to offer.
Above:

Tabulae Anatomicae (1728)

by Bartolomeo Eustachi
Bartolomeo Eustachi, after whom the ear's Eustachian tube is named, drew the illustrations and compiled the corresponding notes in this work of human anatomy, only for the book to be lost in the Vatican library for 150 years. Upon its publication with only eight of Eustachius' original notes, the text was understandably dated, though no less remarkable in its beauty.
Owner: By the Book, Phoenix, AZPhotos: Brian L. Frank/Wired.com

Theatrum Italiae (1663)

by Joan Blaeu
Moving is never easy, and moving is especially difficult when you own a 327-ton Egyptian obelisk and you want it shifted 275 yards to sit right in front of the Vatican. Such was the task assigned to Italian engineer Domenico Fontana in 1586 and detailed in this illustration from Joan Blaeu’s Theatrum Italiae (see a high-res version here). Enlisting some 900 men and 75 horses, it took Fontana a year to move the 83-foot obelisk.
Says the book’s owner, Paul Dowling: “People look at the 16th century and they look at the development of architecture and the arts and they see it as art and visually stimulating, but very rarely do they see the great technological advances that allowed the things to actually come to fruition.... It’s reminiscent of things like Apple. It’s great design, but there's an incredible technological layer underlying it. ”
Owner: Liber Antiquus, Washington, D.C.Photo: David J. Dowling

Cursus Mathematicus (1690)

by William Leybourn
A compendium of British mathematician William Leybourn’s writings, Cursus Mathematicus was aimed at the popular market (particularly for “a dull solitude or vacancy of Business,” as the author put it), as opposed to scholars. It was this book that James Logan, the early American scientist and mentor to Benjamin Franklin, used to teach himself math. The illustration above is a product of a century that saw the introduction of the telescope, affording the first detailed looks at our trusty satellite. We wouldn't glimpse the far side of the moon, however, until 1959.
Owner: Antiquariat Botanicum, Lynden, WashingtonPhoto: Brian L. Frank/Wired.com

Ornithology (1678)

by Francis Willughby
Together with his mentor John Ray, the father of English natural history, Francis Willughby toured Europe for three years to gather material for this, the modestly named Ornithology. When Willughby succumbed to pleurisy during its compilation, Ray picked up the project, publishing the gorgeous work in Latin in 1676 and in English two years later. It was the first study to organize birds by their characteristics, leading distinguished zoologist Alfred Newton to call it "the foundation of scientific Ornithology."
Owner: Liber Antiquus, Washington, D.C.Photo: David J. Dowling

The Temple of Flora (1807)

by Robert John Thornton
Conceived by Dr. Robert Thornton as a tribute to Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, the architect of modern taxonomy, The Temple of Flora is a bulky (22 by 18 inches) tome that is considered to be the finest study of botany ever conceived. With vivid prints and heady poetry, it proved, alas, to be a bit too fine for its creator. “He enlisted the best artists, the best printmakers, colorists, et cetera, et cetera, because he had a vision of this work,” said Helen Kelly, owner of the Boston Book Company. “He went broke, as most visionaries do, like Audubon. They get carried away with the art.”
Owner: Boston Book Company, Jamaica Plain, MassachusettsPhoto: Brian L. Frank/Wired.com

Anatomy of Plants (1681)

by Nehemiah Grew
If family names are derived from occupations, Nehemiah Grew's ancestors must have been just as excited about plants as he was. His landmark work Anatomy of Plants was the first to note that a plant's stamen is a male organ, with pollen being the seed. The text is also remarkable in its unprecedented detail, as seen above, with Grew even getting down into the first microscopic descriptions of pollen.
Owner: Liber Antiquus, Washington, D.C.Photo: David J. Dowling

Insectorum Sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum (1634)

by Thomas Moffett
This work, the first such book on insects published in England, was started by one Conrad Genser. Unfortunately, he died before finishing it, so his assistant, Thomas Penny, picked up the project and expanded upon it. After Penny’s death, Thomas Moffett picked up the project and finished it, but couldn’t sell it to a publisher before he himself died. Sir Theodore Mayerne then picked up the project and miraculously got it published before dying. Though the illustrations that made it into this 1634 first edition are remarkable in their detail, they could have been even better. In order to save money and finally get the thing published, Sir Mayerne had opted for woodcut illustrations instead of copper engravings.
Owner: Pirages Fine Books, McMinnville, OregonPhoto: Brian L. Frank/Wired.com

The Birds of America (1840-1844)

by John James Audubon
This first edition The Birds of America in the octavo format features 500 hand-finished color lithographs of American avifauna, and is rightly considered to be among the greatest books ever printed in the United States. While stunning, it is actually a smaller version of the book's true first edition, which stands at three-and-a-half feet high and features life-size portraits. Called a double elephant folio, because apparently "single elephant folio" doesn't convey enough enormity, the larger sibling of the set shown above sold for $11.5 million in December 2010, a record for printed books at auction.
Back when these smaller editions were released, said the book’s owner, Phillip Pirages, they "would cost you as much as a good horse. Now it’s $100,000.”
Owner: Pirages Fine Books, McMinnville, OregonPhoto: Brian L. Frank/Wired.com

De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543)

by Nicolaus Copernicus
This may well be one of science's most revolutionary illustrations. At the center of this 16th-century model of the Solar System is the Sun, which mankind had hitherto assumed revolved around the Earth. Though the idea of heliocentrism had been floated long before Copernicus, he was the first to use mathematics to tease out a rather less egomaniacal way of envisioning our world, kicking off the Copernican Revolution. It was Copernicus' work that Galileo expanded upon, earning him a lifetime of house arrest by order of the Roman Catholic Church.
Owner: Liber Antiquus, Washington, D.C.Photo: David J. Dowling

Historiae Naturalis (1657)

by John Jonston
Before humans could hop on the internet, in order to gather information they had to flip through encyclopedias, like John Jonston’s Historiae Naturalis, which was the 17th century’s go-to guide on the animal kingdom. And in order to gather that information, Jonston had to travel extensively and, well, plagiarize some of information, what was referred to generously at the time as being a “learned compiler.”
Owner: Pirages Fine Books, McMinnville, OregonPhoto: Brian L. Frank/Wired.com